4.2 Scaffolding learning during the stages of the writing cycle
4.2.2 Using speaking and thinking to scaffold boys’ writing
The CAPS states that when developing learners’ writing skills, the other language skills must be integrated (DBE, 2011a). Thus, the way these teachers integrated those skills into their writing lessons was analysed. In School A, reading was integrated into the writing process by learners reading their own work and their peer’s drafts. Langer and Applebee (1986) state that to achieve effective instruction literacy and thinking skills,
what the learners already have must be built on and would help the learners to complete tasks that they could not on their own. Prior to the commencement of the writing cycle, the learners in School A read and engaged with a text in their workbooks, which was designed to assist them with the completion of their essays. During the class discussion learners were given the opportunity to speak and had to think about responses to questions posed by their teacher. Later, during planning, drafting, editing and publishing stages, learners used their thought processes to make decisions about what ideas, linguistic features and choice of words to include in their essays to present their best efforts for assessment. Moreover, during these stages of the writing process they spoke to their teacher and peers to seek clarity and guidance.
The CAPS supports an integrated approach to the teaching of English, which means that no skill should be taught in isolation, but should instead be imparted within a meaningful context. Thus, it states:
We could start off with a reading piece and do a comprehension test.
Language knowledge questions could also be addressed based on the same text. Post-reading the text learners could be asked to respond to the text by, for example, writing a letter about the issues raised in the text or to write some creative response to the content of the text. To wrap up this activity, discussions could be held about the topic and in this way we address all of the language skills in one fluent, integrated activity.
(DBE, 2011a, p.88).
In this way, the teacher is the ‘more knowledgeable other’ who uses their knowledge to scaffold the learners to achieve what was previously beyond their grasp (Vygotsky, 1978). According to Tierney and Leys (1984), reading and writing have a reciprocal nature, as reading can be used to improve writing and vice versa (Graham & Herbert, 2010). Similarly, Grabe (2003) states that integrating the teaching of reading and writing could result in more effective learning and teaching. The CAPS (DBE, 2011a) prescribes that teachers begin with a reading or listening text, followed by
comprehension, language and vocabulary development activities, and then the writing of a similar text, which are all processes that activate the learner’s thought processes.
The process of writing includes planning, drafting and revision, involving new thinking, exploration and discovery. This means that the relationship between thinker and writer is essential to the process of writing, as is the complex relationship that exists between writing and speaking. Vygotsky (1978) views interactive events as being central to learning writing, wherein the child is the active learner and the adult provides systematic structure. In this regard Graves (1983) recommends that teachers ought to create a balance between talk and writing, set up and manage talk in pairs and groups, schedule individual teacher time to talk to learners about their writing and use writing for oral presentations.
During the lesson observations, Ms Naidoo in School B did a lot of speaking and used the lessons for much reading, but not much writing was achieved in class time. Yet, she began the first lesson by saying, “Our aim this morning is to practice writing skills and your writing skills are very important because there is a format or a procedure that we have to use to get our writing skills correct.” She then proceeded to ask the learners the colour of the first block containing the word ‘planning’, on the inside cover of their activity books, made them repeat the correct pronunciation of the word purple, asked them to spell the word plan, explained capital letters, and then asked a learner to read the explanation of the plan provided in the workbook. It would be fair to conclude that most of the time spent during the observed lessons were consumed by teacher talk, learners reading and learners writing, in that order. This may have been challenging for the boys because they do not hear as well as the girls do (Sax, 2005) and have a shorter attention span (King and Gurian, 2006). Thus, the learners spent most of the time listening to their teacher, trying to process all that she was saying. It was evident that the boys were not always thinking about and following her speech because, in addition to them being inattentive and day dreaming while she was speaking, because if she posed any questions, they were not always able to answer her immediately. She would have to repeat the question or pose it in a different way before a learner would attempt a response. At other times, she would pose questions that required a ‘yes’ or
‘no’ response or speak and stop before the last word of a sentence which she expected the learners to complete. Often this was led by one or a few learners and then followed by the rest of the class, but which would not constitute speaking on the part of the
learners. The following vignette is one such example of what has been described. In the vignettes that follow T=Teacher, LB=Boy and LG=Girl.
Vignette 1: Ms Naidoo questioning her learners during the planning phase 1
2 3 4 5 6 7
T Right so we going to put the topic there. ‘The Bump’. Now we are focusing on ‘The Bump’ and we already know the story but let’s say for example you were given a topic like ‘my school’, I'm using that cause we are all familiar with your school. Right, so our topic is my school and the story that we read is ‘The Bump’.
Now if you looking at planning again, it says decide on your topic. Have we decided?
8 Class Yes 9
10
T Good and what is the planning stage talk to your group to gather ideas to gather ideas means what?
11 LB1 Put ideas together.
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
T Right I love your response but please don't shout out, give the others a chance to think as well. OK. You are correct. Alright to gather information in other words now you are sitting wherever you are writing and you want to put your information together.
That means you gather information. To put information together.
And remember the keyword is to brainstorm. Brainstorm means using your brain and imagining and putting words into place, OK so now we got our mind map which is going to help us to structure our essay writing into paragraph form. Now, when you get up in the morning, and you had your bath and you are now dressing for school, is there an order that you dress in or you just dress anyhow?
24 Class (mumbled) Order 25
26
T When we are talking about order what do we mean? There are steps that we follow isn't it?
27 Class Yes 28
29
T In order means to put it in steps. For example, anybody can give me an example of how you dress in the morning? Only one child
30 knows how to dress in the morning! … 31 LB2 I put on my underwear.
32 33
T You put on your underwear! Very good! Can you put on your school pants and then your undies?
34 C Yes.
35 T Yes?
36 Class No.
37 T No because you not going to have order and it will look clownish.
38 Imagine you coming in to school with your underwear and pants 39 underneath that! Which means you are not following a
40 sequence! Right! A sequence meaning stepwise or in order. Can 41 you come to school with your shoes on and your socks over the
42 shoe?
43 Class No
44 T You gonna look like a clown isn’t it?
45 Class Yes
46 So, people in the same way your writing skills have to follow…
47 It’s like putting the cart before the ....what's it? The cart before
48 the...
49 Class Horse!
50 T Yes. In other words, can the cart pull the horse?
51 Class No.
52 T Who pulls the cart?
53 Class The horse.
54 T So, the horse has to pull the cart.
As evidenced in the vignette above, Ms Naidoo engaged the learners in several concepts in this short episode, using closed-ended questions that required a ‘yes’ or
‘no’ response, and almost a “filling in the blanks” response that they thought she expected them to say. There was no room for critical thinking and this questioning technique did not allow for her to get a fair assessment of their understanding.
The writing which was done in this class involved the teacher giving the learners ten minutes for planning, using a mind map, and about fifteen minutes for writing their
drafts towards the end of the second lesson. It must be borne in mind that throughout this time, the teacher interrupted the writing to explain, edit and question the learners.
4.2.3 The role of scaffolding on the final written product
In School B the stages of the writing cycle were not adequately employed and practised, in other words Ms Naidoo’s choice and implementation of scaffolding tools were not effective. The learners did not know how to complete a mind map, so most did not correctly complete them. Next, they began writing a draft which their teacher was unhappy with, so they had to write a new one (for which they also had no planning) for homework on any topic, but with no clear guidelines, instructions or teacher support, so many did not complete their drafts. They were thus unable to have their work teacher- or peer- edited, but they were then instructed to submit a final neat version the next day for teacher assessment.
The boys in School A who submitted their stories for marking had mind maps and completed stories. However, two boys did not complete their mind maps and another wrote only one sentence under each prompt on his mind map. Most of the boys’ stories met, or sometimes exceeded, the length requirement provided by Ms Chetty, and were legible, and neatly presented. Some stories used ideas from horror movies that the boys may have watched, but their work was mostly original, creative and action- packed. For instance, one boy’s story was based on the Kappa, a character from the horror series ‘Teenwolf’. Although he used the character, his plot was different from the movie (see image below).
Image 2: Use of characters from movies
…I heard a large scary raw. It was the Kappa. It was
staring at me it’s yellow eyes. I was so scared and I did
not know what to do. I went to the back door and opened
it. I ran out of the house and it saw me. The Kappa was
running are me. I started screaming for the Kappa had
captured me…
The situation in School B was quite different. Although most of the boys submitted their books, when analysing their submissions, I found that most had incomplete mind maps, stories or both. In fact, only two boys completed both their mind maps (one of the two boys had a sentence written under the headings: plot, characters and setting) and stories, and one boy completed his story but not his mind map. Their handwriting and overall presentation was generally untidy with many spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors, and their stories were copied from other texts with only three boys writing original stories. As there were no drafts submitted, I analysed the transcripts from the lesson observations and found that almost all the boys had submitted the same stories that they had read aloud to the class, which their teacher had asked them to discard. She had also instructed them to write a new, original story for homework.
Many of them had not worked any further than the point that they had reached at the end of that lesson. The original stories written by two boys still lacked creativity. The excerpts below are taken from the boys’ final neat drafts.
Excerpt A
Excerpt B
Excerpt A is the first paragraph of the original story that a boy wrote. As can be seen, his story lacks depth and creativity and there are many errors, which is an indication that his work was not edited. Excerpt B is an example of a copied, incomplete story that a boy submitted, which he had read out to the class in the lesson preceding the teacher’s instruction to write a new story for homework to submit for assessment. Even though he had copied the story, there are many spelling, punctuation and grammatical
One day i take a taxi somewhere to school we took my best friend one the way to school on the holidays i take a taxi to Pick n Pay to pick some clothes and some shoes too. Then it was time to go home.
Streaker is a mixd up kind of dog, you can see from his thin body and powerful legs that he’s got a lot of greyhound blood in him.
Noby in the family
there was he pulls it’s like he is chasing a cat. he can run 10 mil’s an hour
errors. The original story reads as follows:
Streaker is a mixed-up kind of dog. You can see from her thin body and powerful legs that she’s got a lot of greyhound blood in her, along with quite a bit of Ferrari and a large chunk of whirlwind.
Nobody in our family likes walking her and this is hardly surprising.
Streaker can out-accelerate a torpedo!
(Strong, 1998:1)
In Chapter 6, an analysis of the boys’ written submissions is presented in greater depth.